Defining intercultural competence

Intercultural communicative competence can be broadly explained as one's ability to be aware of and respect different social identities, and the ability to interact with people with multiple identities and individuality (Byram, Gribkova, & Starkey, 2002).

In line with this new shift of the aim of FL education, FL teachers has been challenged to manage new professional skills, knowledge and attitude (Choi, 2016).

Sercu (2006) suggested that FL teachers today has been required to be able to cover intercultural perspectives in their teaching to promote students’ acquisition of intercultural competence, which implied FL teachers should be familiar with both their own culture and the culture of target language, they should be able to employ the teaching techniques for the promotion of intercultural competence and be willing to actively integrate intercultural competence into FL education. In other words, FL teachers are now expected to become “intercultural teachers”, they are pushed to have “more critical, socially, culturally and politically aware knowledge-base than just content knowledge” (Kramsch, 2004; p.45). Evidently, intercultural competence has become one of the crucial objectives of FL teaching, therefore considerable models and conceptualizations of intercultural competence are illustrated below, particularly Byram’s model which is applied for the data analysis in this thesis.

In response to new FL educational objectives of obtaining intercultural competence for students , Byram (1997) made a model of intercultural competence that indicated intercultural communicative competence consisted of “linguistic competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence, and intercultural competence” (p. 49). To be specific, model of intercultural competence is comprised of five Savoirs as seen in Figure 2, including interpreting/relating skills (savoir comprende), skills of discovery and interaction (savoir faire), knowledge (savior), critical cultural awareness (savoirs’ engager) and attitudes (savoir-être) (p.34).

Among five components, attitudes is the precondition while critical cultural awareness is the center of the model. Most importantly, the relationship between five Savoirs are interdependent with each other, for instance, the acquisition of knowledge could help students to be more open and curious about other cultures

and their own culture, simultaneously, students’ attitudes also influence their obtaining of knowledge.

Figure 2. Intercultural competence model (Byram, 1997, pp.62), modified by Huanhuan Zheng

As the foundation of successful intercultural communication, attitudes means

“curiosity and openness, readiness to suspend disbelief about other cultures and belief about one’s own” (Byram, 1997, p. 57). A negative attitude always leads to unsuccessful intercultural communication, while simply positive attitude is also not proper, because positive prejudice can also hinder mutual understanding. And that is the reason why there is need to acquire the ability of curiosity, openness and readiness to suspend disbelief and judgement with respect to others’ meanings, beliefs and behaviors, and the need to suspend belief in one’s own meanings and behaviors and analyse it from others’ viewpoint (Byram, 1997). In brief, this means individuals need to relativise one’s own values, beliefs and behaviors instead of regarding them as the only possible and correct ones, and it can also be named the ability to “decentre”(Byram, Gribkova, & Starkey, 2002).

Another crucial component, knowledge is defined as “knowledge of social groups and their products and practices in one’s own and in one’s interlocutor’s

country, and of the general processes of societal and individual interaction” ( Byram, 1997, p. 58). Also, Sercu (2006) explains knowledge includes both culture-specific (of one’s own and foreign cultures) and culture general knowledge, as well as the knowledge regarding the many ways in which culture affects language and communication. Moreover, it does not mean the primary knowledge about a specific culture, but rather knowledge of how social groups and identities function and what is entailed in an intercultural communication (Byram, Gribkova, & Starkey, 2002).

No teacher can have or anticipate all knowledge of diverse social groups, and the major task of teachers is to develop students’ attitudes and skills as much as knowledge, so there is no need for teachers to be the only information resource. As a matter of fact, it is impossible for teachers to master all knowledge students might need at some point, which indicates that teachers can achieve knowledge together with students. Furthermore, improving students’ skills becomes more important (Byram, Gribkova, & Starkey, 2002).

In terms of interpreting/relating skills, it is “the ability to interpret a document or event from another culture, to explain it and relate it to documents or events from one’s own” (Byram, 1997, p. 61). The key point of it is using existing knowledge to compare or interpret and relate specific behavior or document which are comparable but different with their own social group. Since there is no need to interact with interlocutor, the individuals are able to determine their own timescale for interpretation and not constrained by the social interaction (Byram, 1997).

Additionally, skills of interpreting and relating are crucial in that they are beneficial for decreasing or even resolving misunderstandings by comparing two different cultures or trying to look culture from other perspectives (Byram, Gribkova, &

Starkey, 2002).

Skills of discovery and interaction involve “the ability to acquire new knowledge of a culture and cultural practices and the ability to operate knowledge, attitudes and skills under the constraints of real-time communication and interaction” (p. 61). The skill of discovery comes into play when having no existing knowledge, which means building up specific knowledge together with understanding of the beliefs, meanings and behaviors inherited from certain

phenomena through documents or interaction. As for the skill of interaction, it is the ability to manage constraints entailing time, mutual perception and attitudes when communicating with interlocutors (Byram, 1997). What is more, as stated above that nobody is able to anticipate all knowledge he/she needs for intercultural interactions, so it is necessary to obtain the skill of discovering new knowledge and integrating with his/her previous knowledge and the skill of how to interact with encounters to acquire their values, beliefs and behaviors that they are often unconscious or hard to explain (Byram, Gribkova, & Starkey, 2002).

When it comes to the core part of intercultural competence, critical cultural awareness is described as “the ability to evaluate critically and on the basis of explicit criteria, perspectives, practices and products in one’s own and other cultures and countries” (Byram, 1997, p.63). No matter how open towards, curious about and tolerant of other cultures, individuals’ own beliefs, values and behaviors are deeply embedded and might lead to reaction and rejection, therefore individuals need to be aware of their own values and how these influence their opinions of other cultures (Byram, Gribkova, & Starkey, 2002). Critical cultural awareness involves a critique of one’s own social groups and that of others, because FL learning inevitably draws attention to other countries or social communities where the language being learned is spoken. In addition, it is the center of the model because it embodies the educational dimension of language teaching, and ensures the attention is paid to learners’ education, rather than knowledge, skills and attitudes can be done anywhere by anyone if without critical awareness for instance, commercial training (Byram, 2012).

Overall, these five elements of intercultural competence in the model are interdependent with each other, for example, the increased knowledge might lead to positive attitudes; the proper attitudes makes good foundation for intercultural communication; the skill of interpreting and relating demands for the existing knowledge; the skill of discovery acquires openness and curiosity to new knowledge as well as perceptions; the skill of interaction is based on the management of proper attitude, knowledge and mutual understanding.

Most importantly, Byram’s model of intercultural competence is applied in this study as the main theory for the analysis of teachers’ cognitions and classroom practices, because this model presents a systematic framework of distinctive components (Larzén, 2005), which becomes the basis or echos to others’ theories, for instance Deardorff’s process model of intercultural competence and Larzén’s classfication of teachers’ cognitions in intercultural dimension. Further, the five distinctive but interdependent components are greatly appropriate for being the chosen aims of teachers’ classroom practices which integrate with intercultural competence. In this way, there is no doubt that Byram’s model of intercultural competence is selected as the main theory for analysis.

As claimed above, on the basis of Byram’s model, a pyramid model of intercultural competence as Figure 3 was established by Deardorff (2006), which clearly demonstrates the ongoing procedures of achieving intercultural competence as the internal and external outcome.

Figure 3. Pyramid model of Intercultural competence (Deardorff, 2004, pp.254), modified by Huanhuan Zheng

Note: Move from personal level (attitude) to interpersonal/interactive level (outcomes).

As seen in Figure 3, the foundation of her pyramid model is attitudes entailing respect, openness and curiosity. The upper level is knowledge and skills for interaction, while the top of the pyramid model is desired internal and external outcome. Compared with Byram’s model, in this model, attitudes are also working as the foundational part of intercultural learning, and it means the openness to different cultures and respect for other values as well as keeping in curiosity about them. Additionally, another crucial tool for reaching intercultural competence is knowledge of the self and the other, and the awareness of cultural difference along with skills involving listening, observing, interpreting, analyzing, evaluating and relating. With respect to the internal outcome, it is combined with an internal shift in frame of reference, and transforms into external outcome by interaction, thus enhances the external (observable) outcome of intercultural competence which can be described as essentially “behaving and communicating appropriately and effectively in intercultural situations” (Deardorff, 2004, p. 196). Moreover, with this pyramid model, Deardorff developed a process model of how to acquire intercultural competence as Figure 4 shows.

Figure 4. Process Model of Intercultural Competence (Deardorff, 2006, pp.256), modified by Huanhuan Zheng

Note: Begin with attitudes; move from individual level (attitudes) to interaction level (outcomes).

As seen in Figure 4, the same elements as pyramid model make up the processes of acquiring intercultural competence. During the processes, what should be noted is that the final outcome actually also influences people's attitudes. Overall, this model is an ongoing process of intercultural competence development, which indicates the development will never ends and the how intercultural competence teaching could be made into practice based on different moving procedures. This process model is in accordance with the five components of intercultural competence and it portrays the steps of how to acquire intercultural competence, however, in my view, five components could be developed in teaching practice at the same time independently or together due to the interdependence of them, which explains why Deardorff’s process model is not selected as the main theory for data analysis.